Hewlett-Packard has been sued by shareholders over its $US8.8 billion writedown that the company said was partly related to falsified finances at Autonomy, the British software maker it bought last year.

The complaint, filed in federal court in San Francisco, alleges that Hewlett-Packard issued false and misleading statements. The company concealed that it had gained control of Autonomy based on financial statements that were unreliable because of accounting manipulation, according to the complaint. Hewlett-Packard chief executive Meg Whitman and the company's former CEO, Leo Apotheker, are named as defendants, along with chief financial officer Catherine Lesjak.

"At the time Hewlett-Packard agreed in principle to acquire Autonomy, defendants were looking to unwind the deal in light of the accounting irregularities that plagued Autonomy's financial statements," according to the complaint.

Hewlett-Packard said in a statement last week that some former members of Autonomy's management team used accounting misrepresentations to inflate its underlying financial performance before the acquisition. Mike Lynch, who founded Autonomy, has defended the company's accounting practices.

Deloitte said last week that it didn't find any evidence of improper accounting methods or misrepresentations when it last looked at Autonomy's finances before Hewlett-Packard bought the software company. Deloitte, which said it wasn't employed to do due diligence on the deal, last audited Autonomy's finances for the year ended December 31, 2010.

Apotheker, 59, agreed in November 2011 to buy Autonomy for $US10.3 billion to diversify away from hardware and expand into cloud-computing and add software that searches a broad range of data, including emails, music, videos and posts on social networks such as Facebook. Apotheker left in 2011 after less than a year on the job following repeated strategy shifts and forecast cuts.

The complaint seeks class-action status and unspecified damages for all investors who bought company shares from August 19, 2011 to November 20, 2012.

Michael Thacker, a spokesman for Palo Alto, California- based Hewlett-Packard, declined to comment immediately on the complaint.

The writedown is another blow for the company, which is already suffering from management turmoil and slowdowns in its personal-computer, printer and technology-services businesses.

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